We hope everyone had an awesome Christmas and a fantastic start to 2009!! It is unbelievable how time keeps flying by. We had a nice and relaxing time during Christmas. We had 10 days off work and we enjoyed the rest

Our Christmas day was spent with great aussie friends. We played backyard cricket, had a roast lunch and enjoyed some swimming. It actually felt like we were back in Oz!!

We found out the AWESOME news that adoptions have now opened again. We are so happy for the children waiting to be adopted and for the families waiting for their beautiful kids! 

So far 2009 has been pretty hectic at work as we focus on what 2009 will bring for Beautiful Gate. It is going to be an exciting year for the organisation.

It is only just over 6 weeks now until Sarah’s parents arrive in Lesotho and we are both very much looking forward to seeing them. It will be great to have them here for a couple of months, although living with your mother-in-law for 2 months could be interesting! (just kidding, you know i love you Sue )

Well we hope you all have had a great kickoff to 2009 and we look forward to hearing from you as the year moves on quickly.

Lots of love

Dean & Sarah

Hey lovely people

How did Christmas come around so darn fast ! Unfortunately we can say, tis the season to abandon - we have rescued so many darlings from QEII hospital lately - 39 babies total now at Beautiful Gate.  They sure do keep us on our toes !

A donation came through for Beautiful Gate kids to celebrate Christmas - so the Christmas decorations have brightened everything even moreso and we can buy the children christmas present now !! Beautiful ! So Christmas day we will go in and see them opening their presents. Another donation came through for new play mates and fun and colourful mobiles and play gym stuff - just what we needed ! These babies are so precious and deserve to be spoiled this Christmas after everything their little lives have seen and gone through ! Some people look at Beautiful Gate and think we dont need anything because the facility is just so beautiful but our on-going costs are still the same so it was nice to receive these gifts  

Well I  finally made the King of Lesotho his strawberry cheesecake, topped with kiwi fruit and strawberry jelly - very Christmasy !! I do hope he enjoys it   Im anxiously awaiting the verdict lol He is such a wonderful man and King - great sense of humour, down to earth and funny I have enjoyed running alongside him - but soon i will be challanging him to a 10k race Hmmm…what should we be betting for?? I  know he will accept the challange (and my word, i’ll give him a challange hehehe). Maybe he could come visit Australia if I win?! Nice !

Well, we hope that everyone is enjoying their pre-Christmas preparations - take care everyone xoxo For those on the sunny Gold Coast…swim in the ocean for me and eat some prawns

We have been having issues with internet again at our home and we have been without it for a few days.  It’s back on now and hopefully it will be more reliable

Our website www.madiat.com is no longer available because we decided not to renew it since we will be coming home in May. For those who were giving donations online, please email us at deanmichalk@gmail.com and i can give you our bank details and paypal details for donations. 

I hope everyone is doing well and getting ready for Christmas

Two precious darlings arrived yesterday ! A little boy, 3 weeks old and a little girl, 1 month old.  They were abandoned at Queen Elizabeth 2 hospital.  The little girl was dehydrated and weak - im so glad we got her when we did because i dont think she would have survivied another day! This leads us to wonder if we can organise volunteers through our church here in Lesotho or other organisations to be feeding and caring for these abandoned babies while we wait for them to come to Beautiful Gate. The nursing staff there are so over-worked, that it makes sense to me why they can not care for the abandoned ones

A donation came in to Beautiful Gate for us to buy a Christmas tree and decorations - it looks so Chrismasy here Although, the Northern Hemisphere folk are complaining - but to us Aussies “this is Christmas” !!

On a sad note, today, two of our children who are currently receiving TB medications, had to go have chest x-rays to see if they are well enough now to stop their treatments. While we were waiting, a young man was wheeled in on a trolly - it was obvious to Motlatsi (Beautiful Gate nurse) and I that he was taking his last breaths. I was so angry that they would wheel him into xray, without oxygen (his lips and mouth were blue) rather than him being in the ward and stable?  He screamed out ? his brother’s name before passing away - I couldn’t imagine dying in an over-crowded, stinking hot room, full of people staring - my heart broke for him. My head shakes at QE2’s poor mangement.

And on a happy note, our dear friend Leomile gave birth to a darling baby girl - 3kg !! She called me in the morning at 9 a.m saying she had pains, and then at 3.10 p.m, i had the honour of assisting her to deliver her daughter (with all my heart, i love to help my friends in labour - so much more personal than meeting someone for the first time in labour !).  I was able to get her out of the hospital 2hrs after the birth (otherwise she would be sharing a bed with another woman because the maternity ward is over-crowded) - so much better to take her home and observe her there ! They are both thriving

 Dean and I are looking forward to the upcoming Christmas holidays - hoping to visit our friends down in the south of Lesotho for a few days - village life….FUN !!

Love to you all xoxo

Below is a link to the Beautiful Africa website and blog. The site was setup by a team from the USA that visited Beautiful Gate recently. It is an awesome site that has pictures and stories of some of the amazing things that have happened and are still happening at Beautiful Gate. Please check it out and help support the great work at Beautiful Gate -

http://blog.www.beautifulafrica.org/success-stories/abandoned-on-a-road/

We have had some exciting but busy times at Beautiful Gate recently

We had a precious little boy arrive at Beautiful Gate this week. I’m guessing that his age is 2years 3 months but he is a tiny little fellow - 8.4kg. He was abandoned in a village just outside of the city - again, we are so thankful that Beautiful Gate exists so that he can be in a safe place while investigations are underway. Usually, the new kids SCREAM at us because they are not used to our pale skin but this little boy can’t get enough of us lol ! He is a darling - and i pray we can find his family soon.

Another one of our darling girls went back to live with her father yesterday. We have known her since she was a tiny 2 months old. Her mother passed away and her father didn’t have the resources or supports to care for her so she came to live with us as a crisis-care case. Now, Social Welfare Department have stated to us that he is now ready to care for his daughter, and he has good supports around him now - we are thrilled to see this reunion  ”Another” one of our boys will return to be with family tomorrow - we sure will miss this boy because of his friendly happy nature! We definately will be missing hearing him giggle (not just a giggle acutually - you know the big belly laugh kids have - he does this constantly lol). We are happy though that he is going to be with his family.

All the kids were dedicated this week. A couple of pastors came from CRC and prayed for them - all the careworkers proudly carried the babies up one by one to have the pastor pray - so this event wasn’t just for our childen, but we found that it strengthened and encouraged our staff aswell. This time was very special for all of us

David, our mate from Oz is still with us and what a champion he is ! It has been so lovely to have him stay with us and bring new energy to our little house.  We are keeping him busy (he’ll sleep for a month when he gets home ) 

Hope everyone is well and smiling xoxo Love to you all xoxo

Yesterday we had a fantastic Spring Fellowship at Beautiful Gate. This day is for Bo’me and Bo’Ntate to enjoy some dancing, singing, good food and some teaching from the word of God. We have these celebrations on a quarterly basis and it is always fun seeing the dancing and hearing the beautiful singing. The theme of this celebration was ‘bearing fruit’.

The volunteers even got up and did a skit and a song. We were glad that alot of the staff joined us in song, which meant their beautiful voices could drown out ours!

This week we also welcomed our good friend David, who is also from the Gold Coast. He has been off travelling around the world during his GAP year and has been visiting other missionairies in various areas. He is finishing his trip up in Africa. It is great to have him here and to be able to show him what life in Africa is like.

This weekend Sarah is heading to Semonkong to do the world’s tallest abseil. There is a beautiful waterfall up there that is 204m high! We have been up there before and we walked out to the Waterfall, i was trying to pump myself up to do the abseil at some point, but once i got up there i decided id never do it! Sarah is definately the adrenalin junkie in our marriage.

We are doing well here in Lesotho and everything at Beautiful Gate is going very well. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

We are hoping to book our airplane tickets home in the next month or so. If you would like to help us with the cost of the tickets, then please head to the following link. We really appreciate any help that can be given.

http://madiat.com/page3.php

We hope you are all doing awesome

Beautiful Gate has a new website and it is awesome !! If you want to check it out, go to www.beautifulgatelesotho.org

In 6 weeks, 816 babies have been born - almost 20 babies a day ! Crazy busy but every single day I work in QE2, I feel really honoured to be there and help. 

Today was a sad day but it was a strange feeling because when I woke up this morning, I knew something would be “different” about this day. A darling, young 20 year old came in with pains.  She had her bag packed with beautiful baby clothes and nappies - you could see she was excited and was embracing this precious moment - birthing her first baby.  Her tummy was so tiny and on palpation, the baby was very small- guessing the size of maybe a 30 week gestation baby.  I listened for the tiny baby’s heartbeat but couldn’t find it anywhere - I searched for so long in desperation, trying to keep my cool in front of the mother.  I got the doctor, and he sadly confirmed to me that the baby had died.  It was only an hour after she heard this terrible news that she really started feeling the labour pains.

We went into the labour room - I had one student with me (this was no time for a circus of students) and a tiny little foot presented as she pushed. She continued pushing until the her head was born - i placed the baby girl onto her tummy but her emotions couldn’t handle seeing her baby - all she could do was wail for her loss. So i wrapped her baby girl up in white cloth and held onto her as she cried - my tears were hard to control :’( 

Out of 816 babies born these past 6 weeks, 43 precious souls have gone to be with God. It’s hard to live in a place where death is everywhere, and sadness and mourning are witnessed daily. It doesn’t seem fair when I compare to the standards back in Australia, but I pray I can bring something good to this place.

Within in the next few days we should be welcoming some new additions to our Beautiful Gate family. At the local hospital there has been a couple of babies that have been abandoned by their mothers. One of the babies is a 4 week old girl and the other is a 2 day old boy. We have been trying for a little while to get the 4 week old girl to Beautiful Gate, but unfotunately we have been dealing with some people who seem to lack the understanding of how vital it is to get these children to a place like Beautiful Gate. It can be very frustrating when coming across people who aren’t proactive in getting these kids the best care possible.

This past week we have also said goodbye to one of our beautiful little boys as he has been fostered by a local family. It was a real blessing to see him full of smiles and joy as he went to be with is new family. We are so thankful that local families can foster these kids,  it means we are seeing the children go to be with their new families sooner rather than later. We still continue to pray that adoptions will open. 

Next week we also welcome an outreach team from the USA. They will be here for a week and are coming to help with the business side of Beautiful Gate. We will be having some meetings with them and looking at the direction of Beautiful Gate and introducing some strategies to help us get there. Marketing will be a big part of this as we try and create ways to bring Beautiful Gate to the world effectively and to help people see the great work of the organisation.

We had some awesome news today that the team mentioned above was able to raise enough money so Beautiful Gate can get a new taxi. We are ecstatic that this happened, our current taxi is on it’s last legs!! We want to make sure that our staff are cared for and ensuring they have good transport is just one part of that.

Sarah and I are really enjoying the warmer weather and it is starting to feel a lot like Christmas to us. it’s funny because we had a discussion with our Canadian friend who can’t get used to the idea of not having snow around this time of year! 

We went and got a 6 month pool pass from the local resort here, no way can we go a summer without swimming, its practically part of our Aussie culture  

We hope everyone is doing well and we look forward to hearing from you soon.